2 volumes ; 22 cm

"In this remarkable book, Isabelle Stengers extracts from the traditional word cosmopolitism its two constituents, the cosmos and its politics; she argues that a politics that will not be attached to a cosmos is moot, and that a cosmos detached from politics is irrelevant. It is the great originality of the book to renew our definition of what it is `to belong' or `to pertain' to the world by diving deep into the sciences in order to extract their hidden cosmopolitics. Cosmopolitics I will be of immense interest for practicing scientists as well as for activists and concerned citizens."--Bruno Latour

"Isabelle Stengers presents us with a new way of understanding a remarkably diverse range of sciences and their relation to a material and living world. Playing with a position both inside the practices that constitute and transform science and outside the sciences as their mode of conceptualization, Stengers explores the limits, constraints, and inventions that fuse modern science and contemporary society." Elizabeth Grosz

Isabelle Stengers's sweeping work of philosophical inquiry builds on her previous intellectual accomplishments to explore the role of science in modern societies and to challenge its pretensions to objectivity, rationality, and truth. For Stengers, science is a constructive enterprise, a diverse, interdependent, and highly contingent system that does not simply discover preexisting truths but, through specific practices and processes, helps shape them. --Book Jacket

Originally published in French (7 vols.) by Editions La Decouverte, 2003

Vol. 1 includes the translation of v. 1-3 of the original edition and v. 2. includes v.4-7

Includes bibliographical references and index

1. The science wars ; The invention of mechanics : power and reason ; Thermodynamics : the crisis of physical reality -- 2. Quantum mechanics ; In the name of the arrow of time ; Life and artifice ; The curse of tolerance

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